


Encke's Adventures on Alpha Decks

by The_Word_Arranger



Category: Starfighter
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Bad Mental Images, Encke Deserves Better, Juvenile Pranks, M/M, Perpetual Boners, Selene is a BAMF, Tasteless Jokes, much crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-04 08:06:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4130584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Word_Arranger/pseuds/The_Word_Arranger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A cracktastic side story to Xanadu, featuring Encke, Selene, Cain, Praxis, Phobos and a cast of original characters. Keeler thought he had it bad on Omega Decks…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Encke's Adventures on Alpha Decks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [friedenskind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/friedenskind/gifts), [phyrestorm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phyrestorm/gifts).



> This is a gift fic for friedenskind who requested the bunny, and for phyrestorm who said that the bunny was funny. I hope you guys like it. <3 It fulfills most of their requests, some in more depth than others. You can read their requests and the prototype of this story in the comments section of my story Xanadu if you are at all interested. Some of them are pretty funny.
> 
> This story covers day eight post fire, the day after chapter three of Xanadu. 
> 
> All canon characters belong to HamletMachine.
> 
> Aramis, Castor and Deck Chief Jackson are phyrestorm’s original characters from their story The Praxic View. Thank you for letting me do horrible things to them.
> 
> The concept of Vicks being a chemical mastermind is from a story that I can’t seem to find anymore. If you know, please tell me who the author is (was?) and what it is called so I can credit it. 
> 
> Ceres, Tor, Zephario, Letheo, Ilus, and Luthe are my own original characters. 
> 
> I have no beta, and I suck at grammar. Many apologies.
> 
> All love to HamletMachine!
> 
> ***

Alarm.

Blink awake. “Urf.” More alarm. “Off, fuck it. Alarm off.” Roll out of bed, stumble to the head. Try to soften up enough to piss, source mental image of Commander Bering and a cow, finally succeed. Crawl into the shower, jack off, soap off, dry off. Dress, put boots on, put boots on again on the correct feet. Make it to the mess, coffee. Ahh…hello brain. 

Encke groaned and rubbed his temples with one hand. He had never been a fan of mornings to begin with, but eight day off his suppressants and he was finding them even more miserable than usual. He wasn’t sleeping well, for one thing. He’d bunked Selene in with him as a favor to Keeler, and now Encke was keeping him as a favor to everyone else because Selene talked in his sleep. Sometimes he spoke in Spanish, and sometimes he babbled about computer code or flight vectors, all of which were completely incomprehensible to Encke. Most of the time however, Selene talked to Helios and Encke unfortunately understood every word. He’d originally pegged Selene as sweet and demure, but he was discovering that he could not have been more wrong. Selene had an incredibly dirty mouth, a wildly imaginative mind and some pretty interesting kinks. Encke had woken up last night to Selene murmuring to his dream Helios about all the things he would do to him, and had fled to the head to jack off in horrified, embarrassed arousal. Three times. 

He missed Keeler too, and not just because his brain was permanently stuck on the sex channel. Keeler was his other half in so many ways, and it felt wrong for them to be separated now of all times, even if it was in their best interests. Well, absence made the heart grow fonder or some other such bullshit platitude. Okay, other body parts too.

He was also damn tired of the posturing, fighting, pranking and all of the other horrible, random shit his people had been getting up to. The first few days off the suppressants had been challenging enough. He was down only a handful of Fighters. Deimos, Helios and Ceres had been sent to live with Keeler on Omega decks for the foreseeable future, and a few of his Beta Fighters had gone as well. In return, he was up Selene, Phobos and fourteen Beta Navigators who refused to continue reporting to Keeler once they found out he was Omega. Encke did not consider this a good trade, but it had gone fairly smoothly just long enough for him to relax. Then, Alpha biology reasserted itself, testosterone levels went through the roof and the twenty-eight Alphas lost their collective minds.

The Alpha Fighters were being themselves, only unbearably more so. Encke was pretty sure that they were all having a subconscious competition to see who could give him an ulcer first. So far, Cain was winning. On top of all this, Selene had turned out to be an aggressive, sassy hellion, and Phobos had turned into the dictator from hell. The Beta Navigators who had originally followed Phobos to Alpha decks in the belief that nothing could be worse than serving under an Omega were having cause to regret that decision. Already practiced in mutiny, they had disposed of Phobos and were now milling around like a herd of nervous prey animals. Phobos had disappeared. As a result of all this, Encke had spent most of his time the last few days somewhere in the Venn diagram of aroused, crazed and homicidal. 

He finished his coffee, dumped his breakfast dishes and went to the gym to punch something.

***

He walked into the gym, did a few warm up exercises, taped up his hands and then went to work on a punching bag. Some helpful person had doodled a picture of Cain’s face on one of the bags, and Encke found it terribly therapeutic to smudge the ink lines into blurred bruises. After fifteen minutes he felt calm enough to start his weight training, and went to grab some free weights to load up the bench press barbell. He stopped short. The weight racks were empty except for a few lonely five and ten pounders. He looked around the room thinking that some lazy person had neglected to re-rack them, but they were just gone. Encke closed his eyes in dismayed precognition. One thousand plus pounds of weights didn’t just walk away; they needed help. 

Tor jumped off the elliptical and walked over to Encke. Of all the Alpha Fighters, Tor was probably handling the current changes best. He was tall and lean, with the Mediterranean complexion of his Italian ancestors and hazel eyes. Much like his Navigator and Omega lover Luthe, he was calm, practical and a bit of an obnoxious shit. Tor wiped his sweaty face on a towel, draped it around his neck and grinned at Encke’s consternation. “Hey, Encke. The weights? Might want to check out the rec room.”

“What do you know, Tor?” Encke asked suspiciously.

Tor put his hands up in supplication. “I know nothing. I heard nothing. I saw nothing. Rumors of my knowledge have been greatly exaggerated.”

Encke sighed in exasperation. “The rec room? Our very own zero-g fun house?”

Tor nodded. “Something about epic selfies.” He smiled at Encke and walked out the door. Encke rolled his eyes at the whole exchange. Luthe’s enigmatic nature had rubbed off on Tor a little too much for his taste. Hmm…rubbing off. Right, Commander Bering and a cow and a sheep.

Encke’s mind was yanked back from his contemplation of Commander Bering’s sordid love affair with barnyard animals by Tor’s sudden yelling in the hallway.

“What the hell!? Did you just shoot me with a…is that a water gun? Zephario? Hey get back here!” 

Encke updated his mental tally. Zephario: 7, sweaty people: 0. 

***

When he got to the rec room, he discovered five of his Alpha Fighters, lead by Cain of course, and a few of the Beta ones taking advantage of the zero-g to take pictures of themselves holding up a seven hundred pound barbell with one hand.

He normally encouraged team work, but this wasn’t quite what he’d had in mind. These days, what he really encouraged was for people to sit alone, be quiet and not touch anything, including themselves.

He stepped into the rec room, making sure that his last step was forceful enough to send him floating over to the crowd. They all stopped cheering when they saw him coming, and Cain let go of the barbell to cross his arms and stare Encke down with a defiant look. The weight hovered uncertainly in the air above Cain’s head, and Encke wished dearly for the universe to miraculously fix the broken artificial gravity plating and crush Cain under the weight of his own obnoxious idiocy. No such luck.

Encke considered the situation carefully; he had to pick his battles these days. Cain was being a shit, yes, but he wasn’t fighting, drinking, pranking someone or being obscene in public. He was just…experimenting. For science. It would be cruel of Encke to discourage his intellectual endeavors. Satisfied with his logic, Encke grabbed two hundred pounds of weights that hadn’t fit on the barbell and floated back out the door. Leaving the rec room was tricky these days because the artificial gravity grabbed you as soon as you crossed the threshold. Encke, busy congratulating himself on his own cleverness, wasn’t as close to the floor as he should have been. He fell six inches, tripped, almost dropped the weights on his foot and sent one of them rolling down the hallway, scattering a group of Beta Navigators. 

Damn, he missed. 

He considered trying again, but decided that he didn’t really want Keeler feeding him his own balls when he found out Encke had used his Navigators as bowling pins. 

He rounded the corner back to the gym, and almost had a repeat performance when something wet hit him in the face. “Zephario!” he bellowed. “Get out of the air duct now!”

Zephario dropped from the vent and saluted with the water gun. “Sir.” He looked a bit unhinged. He was a Beta, but he seemed to have caught the madness going around the Alpha decks. 

When Encke first met Zephario, he had been impressed. The kid was smart and funny, worked hard and put people at ease. Encke thought he had the potential to make officer someday and had considered training him up as a Sergeant. The problem was that Zephario’s Navigator was Letheo, and in the six months they had been assigned together he had turned what Encke thought was probably Zephario’s natural aversion to dirt and germs into a full blown, neurotic phobia. On paper, Zephario and Letheo were a great team. In person, they were a match made in hell. Encke had thought that being separated from Letheo would soothe him, but instead it had sent him off the deep end. Now that Zephario knew what he had been missing, he would fight to keep it with bleach and rubbing alcohol and hand sanitizer.

Encke sighed. “Zeph, we’ve talked about this. I know you’re reveling in the glories of cleanliness but this has gotta stop. Hand over the gun.” 

Zephario looked a little crestfallen. “Yes, sir.” 

Encke went to put the water gun in his pocket (is that a water gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?) and reconsidered. He put the gun on top of the weights and went back to the gym. He threw the gun into his locker where it joined the other odd detritus he had collected since they went off their suppressants, including:

1\. A catapult built out of spare parts: confiscated from Deck Chief Jackson after he used it to launch condoms and sugar packets at Encke in the mess hall. 

2\. A tub of blue hair dye: confiscated from Cain after Encke discovered him in the locker room sitting in a guilty circle of unscrewed shower heads.

3\. A screaming rubber chicken: confiscated from Praxis after he tried to beat Cain to death with it, after Cain tried to feed it to him.

4\. A glass, alien eyeball: confiscated from Cain as he tried to slip it into Praxis’ soup.

5\. A pack of cigarette loads: confiscated from Praxis as he tried to slip them into Cain’s cigarettes.

6\. A bottle of some form of distilled death: confiscated from Vicks after the fumes set off the fire alarm.

7\. A candy ball gag that he had originally bought for Keeler, and hid in his locker so he wouldn’t find it: now destined to go in Cain’s mouth the next time he opened it around Encke. He put it in his pocket.

***

Encke finished his work out, and was unsurprised to discover that he was hard again. Anything that got his blood moving gave him an erection these days. Hell, watching people eat bananas gave him an erection these days. Really, this was worse than being a teenager; he was actually starting to chafe with how many times he had jacked himself off in the last thirty-six hours. He resigned himself to another fifteen minute session in the shower, and groused his way into the locker room. 

Praxis was already there under the water, one hand braced on the wall and the other hand wrapped around the biggest dick Encke had ever seen outside of a porno. He shuffled backwards out the door and cursed the unwritten rules. ‘Thou shalt not use the locker room showers to jack off, but if thou really must, then other people shalt not interrupt.’ He stared down at his dick tenting the front of his uniform, thought about Commander Bering and a cow and a sheep and a duck, and cried a little on the inside. 

***

Encke was in a pretty grumpy mood by the time he made it to his make-shift office. He slumped into his desk chair and pulled up his email.

\- Engine status update: thruster power (hur hur) up to 86%, estimated time to Starbase Six: thirty-four days - fucking forever.

\- Complaint from Praxis regarding Cain, subject line: operating machinery while impaired, suspect vodka - rolled eyeballs, sorted into Cain’s (very full) complaint file. 

\- New KP and brig lists - increase in length in direct correlation to increase in testosterone in direct correlation to number of days off suppressants.

\- Complaint from Phobos regarding everyone alive, subject line: smell emanating from mess hall last night, suspect intentional flatulence - forwarded to mess hall staff with the note “please no more beans.”

\- Obscene image from Keeler - saved. Hard again.

\- Crap the computer techs copied all the officers on - scanned for key words like ‘disaster,’ ‘catastrophic,’ or ‘contagious.’

\- Complaint from Cain regarding Praxis, subject line: operating machinery while impaired, suspect only one eyeball – rolled eyeballs (hah), sorted into Praxis’ (mostly empty) complaint file.

\- Complaint from Praxis regarding Cain, subject line: operating mouth while impaired, suspect only one brain cell - snorted loudly, sorted into Cain’s (digitally overflowing) complaint file.

\- Complaint from Cain regarding Praxis, subject line: operating your mom while impaired, suspect I am only one who will - DELETED.

\- Obscene image _not_ from Keeler of unknown person - set aside for future study as potential black mail material. Horrified. Still hard anyways. 

\- Request for status update from Commander Bering - personnel continue to engage in increasingly juvenile and testosterone driven behavior. No casualties to report (yet.) 

He finished with his official work and pulled the picture from Keeler back up on the screen. Keeler had taken it in the mirror, showing off his slim figure and tight, round ass. He was looking over his shoulder with his loose hair held up with one hand and biting his lip. That was good, and hey, he was alone in here. Just ten minutes…Encke had just started to unzip his pants when the door chime went off. 

Encke dropped his head against his desk and breathed through his nose. He thought about Commander Bering and a cow and a sheep and a duck and a dog. He scooted up under his desk a little because he still couldn’t get his pants zipped all the way. God damn but his balls ached. “Come in.”

The door slid open and Phobos came storming in. “I have a complaint to file,” he snapped.

Encke stared at him. “Uh…yes, I got your…um… email.” He stared more. No one had actually seen Phobos for the last two days, and now Encke could see why. Going off the suppressant had not been kind to him. The increased testosterone and other androgen hormones in his system caused his body to freak out and as a result, Phobos now looked like he was trapped back in puberty. His face was covered in cystic acne, his hair was limp and greasy, and he was having trouble modulating his voice. It didn’t crack exactly, but it certainly wandered around the register a fair bit. It suddenly dawned on Encke that at least part of Phobos’ nasty attitude was a defense mechanism; current evidence suggested that he had been a very unattractive teenager. That was kind of sad and Encke almost felt bad for him, until he remembered that Phobos was the one who led the revolt against Keeler and brought all the Beta Navigators to the Alpha decks. Nope. Not sorry anymore. 

Phobos flounced over to the chair in front of Encke’s desk and started whining. “The room you assigned me is directly over the mess hall. Last night, when I was _trying_ to get some sleep your asinine Fighters were in there after hours making so much noise I could hear them through the vents. I went down there to tell them that some of us sleep like _civilized_ people, and I almost passed out when I walked in the room. They were having an eating contest, all the leftover beans from dinner and there was a haze, Encke. A veritable haze of noxious Fighter farts. It was unbearable. I may have to be confined to decks with you all, but that does _not_ mean that I have to put up with such crassness. Now, what are you going to do about it?”

What Encke was going to do was drop kick Phobos out of an air lock if he was so worried about contaminated air. ‘Try none at all and get back to me on that!’ He swallowed that down. “I will have Artemis look into it.” When in doubt, delegate it out.

“Good. And another thing…”

Encke’s eyes glazed over as Phobos gave him a detailed account of every slight, real or imagined, that he had suffered in the last few days. Well, that was an effective way to kill a boner. 

***

Encke finally kicked Phobos out of his office and went back to his bunk. He wasn’t feeling aroused for the first time in a few days, and he wanted to take some time while all his blood was available to think about his future with Keeler. More specifically, how he was going to ask Keeler to marry him now that the war was over. He kicked his boots off, sat on his bunk with his back against the wall and started.

“Keeler, well the war is finally over, and I was thinking that we should decide to talk about whether or not we should think about maybe getting married…” 

“Pfft.” Was that a snort? Encke turned his head listening. No, it was just the ventilation cycling on. It was good that he was practicing; his verbal suaveness was off partying with his higher brain functions somewhere else. He tried again.

“Keeler, you know that I love everything about you, well not the way you leave your loose hair stuck to the shower wall after you wash it, but you totally make up for it with lots of other things, like sex which you are amazing at, not that sex is required to make up for the things you suck at…”

The ventilation broke out into hysterical laughter, and turned into Selene rolling out from under the bottom bunk. He had a can of whipped cream clutched to his chest, and Encke wanted to know why only slightly more than he _didn’t_ want to know why. He gave in; these days what he didn’t know _could_ hurt him.

“What the fuck, Selene? What are you doing?”

Selene stared upside down at Encke from where he still lay on the floor. “Well, I was going to prank you for locking me in here yesterday, but apparently you don’t need my help to be miserable. You are so unsmooth it actually hurts me. Also, you have a booger up your left nostril.”

Encke covered his nose and glowered at him. “Go away Selene and let me suffer in peace.”

“Oh no. Keeler is my friend and there is no way I am going to let you use a line like that on him.” Selene sat on the bed next to Encke with his legs crossed. “We are going to practice until I don’t want to cry. Now, tell me you love me…”

***

After a humiliating hour and a half of being grilled in the proper profession of love and watching Selene eat whipped cream off his fingers, Selene pronounced him ‘halfway decent’ and let him stop. Selene excuse himself, rather quickly, to the mess hall and Encke put his boots back on to join him. 

Squish. 

Crap.

Selene had filled them with whipped cream. 

Encke took off in a squishy run down the corridor, chasing the pale ends of Selene’s hair. Fuck it, Keeler could have this one back. 

***

Encke lost Selene somewhere on deck twenty-seven in the maze of storage lockers. He backtracked a little, listening carefully for Selene to make noise and give his position away. There! Encke overrode the lock on one of the storage units and discovered Deck Chief Jackson having a personal moment with an anatomically incorrect person of the inflatable persuasion. Encke stared at Deck Chief Jackson. Deck Chief Jackson stared back. The inflatable person deflated a little in embarrassment. Encke shut the door. He walked down the hall to the lift, leaned against the wall, and thought about Commander Bering and a cow and a sheep and a duck and a dog and a screech owl.

***

Encke was on his way back to the locker rooms, seriously considering drinking Vicks’ confiscated moonshine when he ran into Praxis. At least he was dressed this time. Praxis looked at Encke in mild concern. “Are you feeling okay, sir?”

Encke contemplated this. “I think,” he replied slowly, “that I have forgotten what okay feels like.”

“Ha ha, yeah. I know the feeling?” Praxis scratched his nose and cast about for something to say to placate his slightly crazed superior officer. “You should come play poker with us. It’ll help get your mind off the weird.”

“Is Cain going to be there?” That would be a deal breaker for Encke. 

“Fuck no. Only sane people allowed.” Praxis knew sane people? Encke was in.

Encke followed Praxis into one of the common rooms where Aramis, Castor, Ilus, Tor and Selene had set up on a large table. Encke internally questioned Praxis’ definition of ‘sane.’ Encke gave Selene a dirty look, and Selene smirked back. He knew that Encke wouldn’t kill him with so many witnesses around. 

“Hey boss,” Aramis greeted Encke and dealt him in the next hand. Encke hadn’t spent much time around Aramis or Castor recently. They were both Betas, and had as such been too well-behaved to require Encke’s attention.

“Hey guys.” Encke tossed his ante in the pot, and took his cards.

“Coming down to slum with the enlisted men?” Aramis asked without rancor. “That’s different.”

Encke shrugged in good humor. “Everything is different these days. Cards seem kinda tame compared to the other shit.”

Castor chuckled and raised after the third card went out. “Yeah, it’s kinda nice like this though, just the guys, no Omega. You know: bros before hos.” 

Encke watched Tor’s mouth compress into a tight line at the slight against Luthe, and Encke had to restrain himself from doing something unnecessarily dramatic. Castor made jokes about everything, and he had blitherer’s disease, which meant that the filter between his brain and his mouth was broken. All the Fighters were more or less used to it, and they generally let it slide because Castor didn’t really mean to be a dick. Encke forgot for a moment that Selene wasn’t a Fighter. Selene stood up abruptly, knocking his chair to the floor, and threw his cards in Castor’s face. “You want to say that again jackass?”

“Whoa, Selene, dude calm down.” Aramis stood as well and put a hand on Selene’s shoulder while Castor spat out a card. Queen of Spades, that card was a bitch.

Selene shrugged Aramis’ hand off. “Don’t dude me. You just called Helios a ho, so fuck you, Castor! You stay away from him, and you keep your hands and eyes to yourself.” 

Castor put his hands up in surrender. “Selene, I didn’t mean it like that. It just slipped out. I’m sorry okay?”

Selene glared at Castor, only slightly mollified and was about to sit back down when Ilus snorted in disgust. “Way to pussy out, Castor. You don’t gotta apologize for saying it like it is, especially not to this wannabe Alpha.”

The room went silent. Encke watched Selene’s eyes narrow dangerously. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” Ilus stood up and walked around the table to get in Selene’s face. “If Castor won’t say it then I will. You only stick up for the Omega because they make you look good. You’re a pathetic excuse for an Alpha. Helios may be a worthless Omega, but he could do way better than your sorry ass.”

Selene’s face went red in anger. “Bring it.”

That was it. Selene was off his suppressants, off his rocker and Encke was pretty sure that his head would be off his shoulders in a minute if he didn’t interfere. 

Encke stood in alarm as Ilus brought his arm back to hit Selene. Ilus was huge and heavily muscled, twice Selene’s size with half his IQ. Encke saw his life flash before his eyes; Keeler was going to kill him. He watched in amazement as Selene easily ducked under Ilus’ clumsily thrown punch, hooked a foot behind Ilus’ knee and punched him in the nose. Ilus went sprawling over backwards, and landed hard on his ass with his nose probably broken and gushing blood. He roared and tried scrambling to his feet, but Selene smoothly kicked him in the solar plexus with his boot and crashed him to the floor again. Selene stood over Ilus, foot on his diaphragm like some glorious conqueror and smiled down at him nastily. “What? You think Fighters are the only ones who can run the martial arts sims?” He increased the pressure of his foot until Ilus whined and jerked his head back to show his neck. Selene sniffed in disdain. “Which one of us is the pathetic Alpha?”

Selene stared them all down, tossed his hair and stomped out of the room. Fucking hell. Encke watched him go, sat back down, looked at his cards, looked farther down at himself, and thought about Commander Bering and a cow and a sheep and a duck and a dog and a screech owl and a fucking wombat. 

It was only partially effective.

***

Encke purposefully lost the next several hands just so that he could plead brokenness and get the hell out of there. He made his uncomfortable way back to his bunk. He only needed five minutes; please gods of the universe just five minutes alone without Commander Bering’s hairy ass getting off with a hairy ass. 

Selene was already there. Selene was already there naked in the shower with the door open, jacking off. Loudly. Encke went back out into the hallway, put his fingers in his ears, and thought about Commander Bering and a cow and a sheep and a duck and a dog and a screech owl and a wombat and an armadillo. 

Artemis found Encke beating his head against the wall outside their quarters. “Oh, I guess you’ve already heard then.”

Encke, still slumped face first against the wall, peered out at him from the corner of one eye. “Heard what?”

Artemis looked apologetic. “It’s Cain and…well, you better just come with me.”

Fuck.

***

Artemis lead Encke back to the rec room, and as advertised, Cain was acting like a grade A shit. It looked like he had been playing basketball with a bunch of the other Fighters before Praxis showed up. Encke guessed that Praxis had ditched the card game as well. He had forbidden Cain and Praxis to be within shouting distance of each other, but listening was not something they were doing well these days. Now, they faced off against each other in a ring of the other players, all heckling and jeering. 

“You’re just jealous because I’ve got two Omega and you don’t even have one!” Cain sneered. He hadn’t noticed Artemis return with Encke.

Praxis stared at Cain in disgust. “Yeah, and you treat both of them like shit! You don’t deserve either one of them!”

Encke watched Cain’s face take on an ugly expression. “I deserve Abel just fine. He said so himself. Face it, Praxis; you will never be good enough for him!”

Praxis shook his head. “What about Deimos? Do you expect him to be satisfied with your sloppy seconds?”

Cain laughed in Praxis’ face. “What, you seriously expect me to believe that you want an Omega like Deimos?”

Praxis looked at Cain coldly. “I would be _honored_ to have a man like Deimos for my Omega. I would certainly be a better Alpha for him than you.”

Cain’s laughter cut off abruptly, and he threw the basketball at Praxis’ head. “You stay away from Deimos or I will seriously fuck you up.”

“Make me! I’d like to see you try.” Praxis dodged the ball and it hit Zephario in the face. Cain took advantage of the distraction to get up in Praxis’ space. 

Cain snapped the eye patch against Praxis’ face and kicked him over backwards. Praxis went flying through the air, twisted to impact the wall feet first and launched himself at Cain. He crashed back into him, punching him in the jaw and they went flying apart again. Encke thought it was almost funny watching them fight like this. They seemed to be actually trying to kill each other; unfortunately, the zero-g turned their normally impressive fighting skills into a wild little dance. They looked like they were practicing for the underwater ballet. Then Cain grabbed Praxis and threw him at the basketball hoop. If Praxis’ head had been a basketball, Cain would have scored three points. He drifted backwards towards the door, laughing hysterically at Praxis tangled up in the netting. 

Encke stared and stared at the ridiculous spectacle, and heard the last dregs of his sanity go down the drain with a sad gurgling noise. 

Encke grabbed Cain out of the air, swung him to the floor on his back and sat on his stomach. The room went suddenly quiet, and Cain’s mouth dropped open in shock and bewilderment. Encke reached into his pocket and pulled out the candy ball gag. The candy part had melted just enough to become sticky and it was covered in pocket fuzz. Encke held it out at arm’s length for a moment, admiring its beauty and allowing Cain to see the instrument of his doom. Cain started struggling and yelling, but Encke (who did his weight training under normal gravity, thank you) had no trouble maintaining control. He shoved the ball gag in Cain’s mouth and wrapped the ties around the back of his head, catching his hair in the Velcro fastenings. He tapped Cain on the nose with his index finger. “Behave.” 

Oh, the beauty! Oh, the silence! Encke grabbed his tablet out of his other pocket and took a picture to preserve this precious moment forever. Then he sent it to Keeler, asking him to give it to Abel. Encke was nice like that.

Then he stood up, nodded to Artemis and drifted out of the room, awash in the elation of a long awaited victory. 

He crossed the threshold, and fell flat on his face. 

***

He made it back into the lift before he realized that he was hard again. 

He fell to his knees, put his head in his hands, and thought about Old Commander McBering and a cow and a sheep and a duck and a dog and a screech owl and a wombat and an armadillo and a hippo and the rest of his whole fucking farm. 

E-I-E-I-O.

It didn’t work; he was still hard.

Encke screamed the sad, broken scream of a sad, broken man. 

***

Selene was still in their bunk when Encke got back. He was lounging on the top bunk in his underwear, and he didn’t even have the decency to look ashamed of all his bad behavior that day.

“Selene, I need you to go be somewhere else for the next two minutes.” Encke spoke with the deadly calm voice of a man on the edge.

“Why? I’m expecting a message from Helios.” He waved his tablet at Encke. Of all the times for him to be dense, he had to pick now. Encke suspected that he was doing it deliberately.

“That’s fine. Take your tablet, but please just go away. One minute and you can come back, I promise.” 

“What the hell? Tell me what’s going on and I’ll think about it.” Selene dropped off the bunk to stare up at Encke with his hands on his hips.

“Thirty seconds Selene! Out!” Encke was desperate.

“No!” Stupid…stubborn...Selene.

Encke cracked. He picked Selene up by the waist, put him outside the room and shut the door in his face. He locked it with his officer’s code so that Selene wouldn’t be able to get back in unless there was a ship wide emergency. Encke wouldn’t put it past Selene to set off the fire alarm just to get back in the room, but that would take him at least a minute. 

Encke went and lay down on his bed.

He unzipped his pants.

He thought of Keeler, no animals of any kind allowed.

It took twenty-seven seconds.

***

Encke fell asleep before he could unlock the door and let Selene back in.

Selene spent the night bunked in with Cain, eating the candy ball gag and plotting their revenge together.

***


End file.
